Only my condemnation injures me.”
“My condemnation keeps my vision dark, and through my sightless eyes I cannot
see the vision of my glory. Yet today I can behold this glory and be glad.”
All of my life I have thought that the world is the cause of my injury. I have thought that if only this person would not treat me this way, or if that situation had not happened, then I could be happy. My bad behavior could be explained as a normal reaction to someone’s attack, or because a situation provoked me. Even though I now know this is never true, my first reaction is still often that it is not my fault but someone else’s.
The difference now is that I don’t stay there. I notice when I am projecting and placing blame, and with the Holy Spirit’s help I withdraw those projections as quickly as I am able. I am now very uncomfortable when I am blaming and placing guilt outside myself, and just as uncomfortable when I do it to myself. I quickly change my mind. Well, sometimes I resist awhile, and it seems to require a lag in time for me to accept a new way to see it. But always, I do it.
This lesson speaks of dark vision and sightless eyes and this is an excellent description of what it feels like to blame and condemn. It is like dark clouds have rolled in and blocked the light from my life. I completely lose sight of who I am and my awareness shifts from the glory of being God’s only Son. In condemnation I see myself as only a body in competition with other bodies, living in time and space. I feel heavy, dark, and utterly lost. It feels foreign and yet depressingly familiar.
I think of identifying with the ego as being stuck in quicksand. It seems to draw me relentlessly down into the muck of ego thinking. The only way to free myself is to remember that nothing draws me except by my own decision to allow it. The ego is nothing without my support. I created it, and it is sustained only by my belief. If I withdraw my awareness from it, it will cease to exist.
This thought is both exhilarating and frightening. The quicksand of ego thinking may be an entrapment, but it is one of my own making. It may be depressing, but it is familiar and it is my own choosing. I seem to be reluctant to entirely give it up. What if I need it later? What if someone does something so bad that I don’t want to forgive it? What if I don’t like being glorious and want to be small and insignificant again? What if I decide that I can’t handle being perfect and joyous and miss drama and excitement and chocolate? The ego tries to entice me into not quite letting go.
But I must choose; one or the other. I cannot be God’s Son and have a little ego thinking in reserve. God is Whole and there is no separation in Him. There is no little of this and little of that. There is only God. To know myself as existing in God, I must know myself as complete and whole. So I practice letting go of ego thinking. I practice turning my attention from ego to God. I practice tuning out the ego voice and listening only to the Voice for God. As I experience the utter peace and joy this brings me, and as I notice how this contrasts to life as an ego thought, as a body living in fear and condemnation, I am more and more willing to choose God.
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